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His father’s name etched itself onto his skin the first time he used his quirk. The spark of flame flickering to life in his palm brought with it a painful stinging sensation, sharp and biting. When the fire withered and died and he looked down to inspect the damage, he saw his Names had appeared. One on each wrist, inky black and more permanent than any tattoo.
Touya looked at his Names, and felt the heat of his quirk under his skin, and knew, instantly, that all his wishes had come true.
His dad was more than just a hero, he was Touya’s hero. He was big and strong and he never gave up, and Touya was going to be just like him one day, because 轟炎司 was written on the inside of his wrist.
His dad was going to be the best thing to happen to him. That’s what his mom always told him when he asked about the Names on her own wrist. One Name for the one who would make you a better person, and one for the person who would stand in your way.
His mom had 轟炎司 on one wrist too.
See, she would say, as he ran his fingers over the characters, marveling at how they never smeared, your father is a great hero, and marrying him brought me you.
He wondered how many people had his father’s Name on their wrists as their greatest hero. He wondered if any villains had his father’s Name too, as their greatest enemy.
If he was going to be a hero like his dad, would any villains have his Name? He looked at the kanji symbolizing the biggest enemy (villain?) in his life.
Whoever the other Name belonged to, whoever 志村転弧 was, they had better watch out. Because Todoroki Touya was going to follow in his dad’s footsteps. Nothing and nobody was going to get in his way.
He was going to be a hero.
Tenko’s father hated heroes. Perhaps because the Name on his wrist was his own mother’s, and she had left him, and she was a hero. Tenko didn’t understand. Surely his grandmother’s Name meant she was his father’s hero? How could a hero hurt someone bad enough to be their biggest enemy?
Most of his classmates already had their Names, and they always said one Name was for the person who would save you, and one was for the person who would try to kill you. His teacher always said they were being “overdramatic,” but she never said they were wrong.
He didn’t have his quirk yet, which meant he didn’t have his Names. He looked at the bare skin where they would one day appear and imagined what the people who would change his life would be like. When his father got angry at him, he looked at his wrists and wondered who would save him. He wondered who his greatest enemy would be, and if they would be any worse than Father.
Whenever he felt sad, his sister would take his hands into her own and point to his Name on her own wrist.
Look, she would say, with such a wide smile that he couldn’t help falling into it, you’re going to be my hero.
That thought made him feel light as air. He was going to follow in Grandmother’s footsteps. His Name wasn’t only on his sister’s wrist after all. His whole family had 志村転弧 on the inside of one wrist. That could only mean one thing.
He was going to be a hero .
When his quirk turned on him, so did the Names.
It didn’t take long for Touya’s father to realize his oldest son was a failure - his quirk tried to eat its way out of his skin every time he used it. And now that his youngest brother’s quirk manifested, he would be cast aside for good. He tried to remain optimistic, to prove that he could be the hero he was supposed to be, but with every training session spent wincing in pain it became harder and harder.
It was his mother’s face when she looked at her own wrists, that really settled it. She always looked sad, these days. At first, he hadn’t realized why. Everything will be okay, he told her, my Names mean that Dad will turn me into a great hero. And she would smile softly, and ruffle his hair, and he would forget the sad look on her face.
But then the fact he’d been trying to avoid thinking of settled with undoubtable certainty: He was deeply, irrevocably flawed, and his father would never be proud of him. His father wasn’t his mother’s hero, he was the one who hurt her.
轟炎司 may have been a professional hero, but he certainly wasn’t Touya’s hero.
And if being a hero meant hurting the people who loved you, then Touya never wanted to be one.
The Names showed up sometime between the horror and the emptiness following the horror. Tenko didn’t even notice them until Sensei took his hands gently into his own and turned them over.
Look, Sensei said, pointing to his Name, stark black against Tenko’s pale skin. It was meant to be. And so Sensei gave him his own name, Shigaraki, so he would never forget who saved him.
Whoever the other Name belonged to didn’t matter. Whoever 轟燈矢 was, it didn't matter.
Tenko’s dreams of being a hero, of being his sister’s hero, had crumbled away with her. He held what remained of Hana with four fingers, and looked at the Name on her wrist: 志村転弧. His name, which would serve as an eternal reminder that he was the worst thing to ever happen to her. That he killed her.
Father’s hand, the one bearing his grandmother’s Name (志村菜奈) smothered him. The weight of a hero’s failure and a father’s hatred and Tenko’s own guilt, an ever present reminder of his burden. He hadn’t been his family’s savior, he’d been their downfall.
He could never be a hero. He wasn’t capable of anything but destruction.
The Names went up in flames with the rest of him. They both did. His father’s and the stranger’s, whoever the fuck 志村転弧 was. He resolved never to meet them. He didn’t need a good influence or whatever bullshit people spouted.
And besides, now that he had a little clarity, a little distance, who’s to say that his father wasn’t his biggest positive influence? He was free now, unburdened. Surely that was a good thing. He’d never have escaped without his father pushing him over the edge.
He knew it was a lie as soon as he thought it.
He looked at his wrists, where the scars warped and twisted his skin so that nothing remained of his Names except black smears.
More permanent than any tattoo. He scoffed. Nothing was permanent. He was the living proof.
Dabi was free from the shackles of his Names. The ones on his wrists and the one he'd been born with. It was liberating.
He itched. He itched until the Names were raw and bleeding. Until they scabbed over with a decade of scars. But still, the kanji were imprinted in his memory.
轟燈矢. His savior or downfall.
Except 轟燈矢 couldn’t be his anything. He was dead.
Tomura had never been able to shake his curiosity about the other Name. The one Sensei told him not to worry about. For a while, he succeeded at not worrying. It wasn’t hard to ignore the Name’s presence when his sister’s hand was covering it, when his Name on her wrist was covering it, a reminder to him that the only name that mattered was the new one he’d been given.
Shigaraki.
But still, he couldn’t shake the curiosity, and after Sensei’s defeat at the hands of All Might, he could no longer ignore the Name’s presence. Surely if this was his greatest enemy, he should be prepared, right?
It only took one late night in the glow of a computer monitor to discover that 轟燈矢 was the name that belonged to Endeavor’s oldest son. It made sense. Obviously it meant Todoroki Touya would grow up to be a hero like his father, and that meant he would be Tomura’s enemy.
It just meant Tomura would have to take him down before he could grow to be a threat.
But Todoroki Touya was dead. Died in a quirk related accident, apparently.
Tomura thought about asking Sensei how it was possible his greatest enemy died before he even met him, but he already knew why. Deep down, he knew the answer.
He didn’t deserve good things.
轟燈矢. His downfall...or his savior.
He didn’t deserve good things.
His asshole father was still the number two hero, he alternated between extreme pain and unfathomable numbness on a daily basis, and after a weak moment in a dingy computer café, he learned that Shimura Tenko had been dead for over a decade.
Also, his new boss was annoying.
“These are your targets,” Shigaraki said as he laid three photos on the bar counter. For some reason, Shigaraki had appointed Dabi as the leader of the Vanguard, and that meant Dabi got to spend a lot of alone time with the creep as they solidified their plan.
Dabi leaned in to examine the photos. His gaze locked onto a head of red and white hair.
“Why the Todoroki kid?” he asked, panic catching in his chest. Does he know?
Shigaraki narrowed his eyes. “None of your concern.”
“Yeah, actually, it is,” Dabi replied, hoping he didn’t sound too defensive. “You really think you can get the number two’s son on your side? Or is he a bargaining chip?”
“I have a question for him.”
“A question,” Dabi said flatly, but his heart was still pounding. Does he know? “You want us to kidnap Endeavor’s son for a question. I’m gonna need a little more than that before agreeing to this.”
“You go where I point you to go,” Shigaraki growled. “You follow my orders. You are my weapon. The bullet to my gun, the arrow to my bow, the-”
Dabi’s palms sparked and he clenched his fists to smother them.
“What’s your problem?” Shigaraki sneered.
“Nothing,” Dabi said quickly. “Just remembered something.”
The Name. The dead boy’s. One of the kanji was something to do with a bow, right? He’d always been fascinated by that connection as a kid, since his own name contained the kanji for arrow. His mom thought it was a sign of fate. His dad scoffed and said it was a coincidence.
He’d tried his best, the last few years, to avoid thinking about the Name altogether. Fate and coincidence, neither of them existed unless you wanted them too, and he didn’t want it. He tried to put that all behind him. But here Shigaraki was, digging it back up and dragging it into the light.
Annoying.
In the end, they didn’t even manage to secure Todoroki Shouto, but that loss was overshadowed by Shigaraki’s “Sensei” getting arrested. Dabi ended up with nothing to show for his trouble but a pounding headache and the memory of his brother’s mismatched eyes wide with fear.
The rest of the League were quiet about their Names, so it wasn’t hard for Tomura to avoid thinking about his own. They all had their secrets, and as long as it didn’t impact him, they were free to keep them, if it meant nobody would ask about his own Names.
He caught Toga writing over hers in permanent marker, saw Mr. Compress tug at his gloves, saw Spinner rub his wrists self-consciously, and overheard Twice arguing with himself over whether Bubaigawara Jin was a good Name to have or a bad one. Dabi hid his Names under layers of scar tissue, and Tomura wondered if the Names and their absence were the cause of Dabi’s pain, or a side-effect.
When Tomura led them into battle, he wondered if his Name was on any of their wrists. If their fates had been tied together since their quirks manifested and determined their futures.
If he was their savior or their downfall.
He wondered, when Magne died, if his Name had been on her wrist, and if she joined the League thinking she’d finally found somewhere she belonged, only to wind up dead. But he would never know, because Overhaul hadn’t left anything behind.
It was extremely satisfying, taking Overhaul’s arms in revenge. Seeing his own Name turn to ash. Knowing Overhaul would never realize 志村転弧 was the true name of his downfall.
Dabi spent a decade convincing himself people were worthless, himself included. It wasn’t until the League that he realized weak and flawed did not equal worthless, despite his father’s lessons to the contrary.
He tried to distance himself from them, at first. Tried not to get attached. But he couldn’t help being drawn in, and over time, unwillingly learned about the people he was fighting alongside.
Twice’s mental state was precariously balanced on a knife’s edge, fragile in the way his father would have sneered at. But his quirk was overwhelmingly powerful, and his heart was more full of love than anyone else Dabi had come across, proving that Twice wasn’t as broken as the world condemned him to be. Spinner had a weak and useless quirk, but he didn’t let it limit him. Instead, he used it to strive for something greater than his birth dictated. Toga didn’t let other people’s opinions stop her from taking what she wanted, and refused to be intimidated by anyone, hero or villain. And even after losing an arm, Mr. Compress remained himself, taking it in stride and adapting remarkably well.
And then there was Shigaraki. He was the poster child for “flawed.” Bratty, violent, moody, arrogant. Dabi couldn’t count the number of times he wanted to light him up and save himself the trouble.
But he’d changed. Somewhere along the way, Shigaraki grew. He listened to everyone’s complaints, he learned from his mistakes. And Dabi couldn’t help but respect that, and in turn, respect Shigaraki himself.
And then he realized that he’d failed. Somewhere along the way, he’d started to care.
Somewhere along the way, he’d started to care . About the League, and about Dabi. Tomura got pissed when he showed up late, was lenient with him when he cremated potential recruits, and felt a weird, warm feeling in his chest whenever he saw him.
He would never have been able to put a name to the feeling without the rest of the League. Without Toga and Twice showing him the many forms love could take, without Spinner showing him what devotion looked like, without Mr. Compress sitting him down one day and telling him that he’d been looking happier lately.
Tomura wasn’t familiar with “happy,” wasn’t sure he even deserved happiness, but he wasn’t sure what else to call it. He’d never admit it out loud, but after Sensei and Kurogiri were arrested, the League of Villains were the closest things he had to a family.
Tomura sat on a couch somewhere in the Paranormal Liberation Front’s headquarters, waiting for Ujiko to finish his new prosthetic, and thought about how he came closer to losing them than he ever had before. They made it , but it had been close, too close. If Ujiko hadn’t woken up Gigantomachia… he shook the thought away. They were alive. And they had an army, now.
He stared at the table lamp next to him. A moth was beating itself against the bare light bulb. Over and over again, self-destructing, too stupid to stay away from the thing that would inevitably burn it to death.
He found himself thinking of Dabi, who was sitting next to him as his assigned guard. Why was he so drawn to him? Why did he care so much?
And then he thought about his Names, and how Sensei’s Name had nearly been taken from him altogether when Re-Destro destroyed his hand, and he thought about how he and the fucking moth were both too stupid to stay away from things that could destroy them.
Shigaraki was itching. He was always itching, but today it was an absentminded itch at his mutilated wrist that he didn’t seem to be aware of. Dabi let it go. It wasn’t his problem. He didn’t care.
They were sitting knee to knee on a ratty old couch and he didn’t care about Shigaraki’s issues.
But then Shigaraki scratched open an old scab. And kept scratching. Blood dripped onto the couch.
Dabi shot out a hand and pulled bloodied fingers away from Shigaraki’s wrist. “Stop that.”
Shigaraki snapped out of it. “Let go of me.”
“Are you going to go back to tearing your skin to pieces?”
Shigaraki looked down at his bloody wrist. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh . Not that I care, but whose Name is so terrible that you feel the need to rip yourself to shreds?”
Shigaraki stared at him. For a second, Dabi thought he would deflect or refuse to answer or just kill him. But he didn’t do any of those things.
“A dead boy,” he said in a distant voice.
Dabi blinked in surprise. “Did you know him?” Did he kill him? Did he love him?
“No. He was supposed to be…” Shigaraki sighed. “It doesn’t matter who he was supposed to be.”
Dabi’s hand drifted to his own wrist, where the Name of a dead boy was buried under his own scars. “Seems like we have that in common.”
Shigaraki eyed him curiously.
Dabi wasn’t blind. He knew Shigaraki felt...something, for him. Whether he knew it himself or not was a different story. But Dabi couldn’t let him in, even if he thought he might feel the same way.
Like candle flame to a moth, he burnt things that got too close.
Dabi revealing himself to be Todoroki Touya in front of the whole world would have been a shock even if his Name wasn’t buried beneath the old scabs on Tomura’s wrist. But it was.
Tomura’s mind raced as they fled. The heroes were distracted and he was still adjusting to Ujiko’s upgrades, but Dabi’s grip on him was tight as they raced through broken streets, decaying and incinerating everything in their path.
It didn’t make sense. Todoroki Touya was dead. Todoroki Touya was his enemy. If Touya was alive and Touya was Dabi...that meant Dabi was his enemy. Dabi would fuck everything up.
He slammed Dabi up against a wall the second they were clear of the fighting. “What are your intentions,” he hissed, trying not to feel betrayed.
Dabi’s brow furrowed. “My intentions...with you?”
“With everything."
“The same as they’ve always been. To tear down the pillars of this corrupt society.”
“Then how do you explain…” His hand drifted from Dabi’s throat to the wrist bearing Touya’s - Dabi’s - Name.
Dabi’s eyes flickered down. Narrowed in understanding. “That dead boy whose Name you’re so determined to scratch off. Who was he?”
Tomura hesitated, not sure he wanted to reveal this weakness. But something in the way Dabi was looking at him made him reply. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
Dabi hesitated, but traced a shape in the dust left behind after their escape. Tomura’s heart skipped a beat. His name. His real name. 志村転弧. The Name on his sister’s wrist, on his mother’s wrist, on his grandparent’s wrists.
On Dabi’s wrist. On Todoroki Touya’s wrist.
“Oh,” he said softly, wondering if he would end up killing Dabi too.
“You know him?”
“Probably about as well as you know Todoroki Touya.”
Todoroki Touya was dead. Dabi had burnt his memory to ashes almost a decade ago. To hear that name from Shigaraki’s mouth, from Shimura Tenko’s mouth...
Shimura Tenko who was supposed to be either his greatest friend or his greatest enemy.
The universe was laughing at him, and Dabi couldn’t help joining in. A hysterical chuckle bubbled out of him.
“Is this a joke to you?” Shigaraki asked.
“So,” Dabi said. “Am I going to kill you, or are you going to kill me? Or are we going to skip happily into the sunset together?”
“Shut up,” Shigaraki hissed. He leaned against the wall and sank to the ground, putting his head in his hands. He took a shaky breath. Dabi felt a little guilty. He knew the painful mental shift that happened when your hero became your enemy, and Shigaraki was clearly going through that process now. Which meant he wanted Dabi to be his...hero?
Dabi’s chest felt suddenly tight. It might be easier if Shigaraki thought Dabi was going to kill him.
But if Shigaraki had spent his life believing Todoroki Touya was his enemy, then whose Name was on his other wrist?
“My other Name is my father’s,” Dabi said, surprising himself with his own honesty. “When I was a kid, I thought that meant he was my hero. He wasn’t.”
Shigaraki’s head jerked up. That first truth was the breaking of the dam, and soon Dabi spilled all his secrets to Shigaraki. His family, his prison, his escape, his freedom, his pain.
And then Tomura returned the favor.
“So is this how you felt?” Tomura asked after they’d shared both their pasts. “When you realized that he wasn’t your savior?”
“How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” Tomura said truthfully. “I don’t think I feel anything."
Dabi sat down next to him, close enough that their knees touched. “Yeah.”
“If I’m wrong, if you really are my…” he couldn’t say it. If Dabi was his enemy, that meant Sensei was his savior. He’d always tried to convince himself he was, tried to believe Sensei’s words, but he always knew, deep down, what Sensei had done to him was wrong. But if Dabi, if Todoroki Touya, was his downfall...
“It doesn’t matter,” Dabi said. He took Tomura’s hand in his, finger running gently over his Name. Dabi’s skin was warm. “My life is already fucked. Nothing you do could make it any worse.”
“But then that means…”
Dabi shook his head. “It means nothing. It means what you make it mean.”
And then they sat together, hand in hand, two boys who grew up in the shadow of their father’s hatred, liberated at last.
It was time to burn away those shadows. Starting with Endeavor.
Dabi always thought he’d have to beat his demons alone, but the next time Dabi stood in front of his father, Shigaraki was at his side. The angel on his shoulder.
“You’d make him a martyr,” Shigaraki said, grabbing Dabi’s hand and preventing him from unleashing the final blow. “You don’t want that. You want him to suffer."
Did he? Or did he just want this to be over?
Shigaraki pressed something into his hand. Cool, slick metal, hard and heavy in his palm. Dabi looked up at Shigaraki in shock. They didn’t have many quirk erasing bullets to spare. This was...this was Shigaraki altering his plans. For him.
“Let him suffer,” Shigaraki said.
Dabi pointed the gun at his father’s head. The fire inside him roared. His father’s eyes went wide with realization. He mouthed something, a name, a plea, but Dabi was done listening. He shifted the gun’s position.
A shot rang out, and the number one hero fell.
And with Endeavor fell the Hero Public Safety Commission. Faith in heroes was irrevocably shaken, and it didn’t take long for the cracks in hero society to finally give way to decay.
With so much chaos and distraction, it was easy for Tomura to break into Tartarus, intending to interrogate All for One. To ask him why.
But of course, breaking in left a whole to break back out, and All for One was apparently tired of sitting around. With security down and no heroes to stop him, it was easy to break free of the chains holding him down.
After laughing in Tomura’s face, gloating about how he’d twisted such an innocent child into the monster standing before him, and how this was nothing more than a game to him, that Tomura was nothing more than a pawn designed to shake All Might, he stood up, rolled his shoulders, and let loose hell.
Tartarus broke like an egg on pavement, villains spilling from its shell, eager to wreak havoc on the world that had left them to rot.
Tomura barely escaped, filled with nothing but the burning need to destroy.
The world was flame and chaos. Heroes and villains and mindless nomu and civilians and Dabi, standing in the middle of it and feeling very in over his head.
Shigaraki was screaming for his sensei. No, screaming at his sensei. Shit. He was going to get himself killed . Dabi leapt over some rubble. All for One had Shigaraki pinned to the ground and was reaching for his forehead. Was he trying to take his quirk ? Was Shigaraki crying?
A blast of blue flames washed over All for One, giving Shigaraki enough of a reprieve to wriggle free. He lunged for his precious sensei, but Dabi had caught up, and he yanked Shigaraki away before All for One could succeed in killing him, or worse, taking his quirk.
Shigaraki screamed and yelled and thrashed but Dabi didn’t let go. Heroes were already piling on, holding All for One back, too overwhelmed to care that two villains were retreating across the battlefield.
“Let go of me!” Shigaraki shrieked. “I need to -” his chest heaved. “I need to -” His eyes were wild. He was shaking violently.
“You need to think," Dabi said as he dropped Shigaraki to the ground. “You can’t kill him like this.”
"Fuck you," Shigaraki hissed. “I didn’t stop you from trying to light up your old man, did I? I gave you the bullet that ended his career, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t have the entire country’s heroes watching me. And Endeavor is one man. All for One...isn’t even human anymore, is he? You can’t beat him alone.”
“Then how?”
He sounded lost. The world was crumbling out from beneath him, and he was looking for something steady he could cling to.
“Together,” Dabi said, surprising himself with how sure he sounded. “We do it together.”
He thought he’d lost that part of himself. The part that wanted to protect. To save. He thought he’d lost it the second his quirk turned on him. The second he was sent down a path he couldn’t escape.
But he hadn’t lost it. He’d found it in a warm hand and a look of understanding.
He never thought he’d make it this far. Never imagined that something like a future could exist for him. Never believed that he deserved it.
But it did, and the proof of it was written on the skin of his wrist. Buried under old pains, but not erased.
Their hands reached for each other.
They saved each other.